CLIPPER ROUND-THE-WORLD RACE with Rainbow Centre Supporter - ANDY MILNER sailing on TEAM FINLAND

We will use this page to track Andy's progress as we get news of the race. More details can be found on http://www.meridian360.me.uk/index2.html and http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/index.php/Home

Eighth Leg - San Francisco to Panama

Seven days into this leg, Team Finland lie in second place 22 nm behind Spirit of Australia. This reflects the position in the race overall where they also occupy second position.

Fifth Leg - Geralton (W. Australia) to Singapore - Team Finland 4th

Unfortunate, the Irish boat, Cork, struck a reef and sank on this leg. Team Finland was involved in the rescue of crew members.

Fourth Leg - Capetown to Geralton (W. Australia) - Team Finland 1st-

With the exception of the two boats involved in the starting collision (below) the fleet has completed this leg (16/12/09). Once again,the first boat home was Andy Milner's "Team Finland). They are also the overall race leadrs, having won 3 of 4 legs and coming second on the other! The race now takes its Christmas break. Well done to Andy.

The big news of this leg was the startline collision between "Cork" & "Hull & Humber" resulting in significant damage to both. The boats are still in Capetown undergoing major repairs. There were no injuries.

Third leg - Rio de Janeiro to Capetown - Team Finland Second

Team Finland have completed this leg in second place - the winners were the Irish Team - Cork. Team Finland now lie top of the overall standings, since previous leader, Spirit of Australia could only manage sixth place picking up only five points. Team Finland have 29 points in total, Spirit of Australia are second with 26 points.

Second leg- La Rochelle to- Rio de Janeiro - Winners Team Finland

20/10/09. Team Finland have made it 2 out of 2. They won the second leg, arriving in Rio yesterday. Spirit of Australia have finished second (again). This gives Australia the overall race lead. Team Finland sacrificed the chance for bonus points and ignored a scoring gate in the Atlantic and headed directly for Rio. Australia choose different tactics and picked up the three bonus points. Finland have two wins (20 points). Australia have two second places (18 points) plus a bonus of 3 for the gate, making 21 points

Message from Andy

"Hello Rainbow Centre

We have now left European waters and are passing the west coast of Africa .  All our wind now comes from the Sahara so it is getting increasingly warm - shorts and T shirt has become the night choice too. Really nice sailing conditions and we are making the most of it as it will get very hot soon. Hull and Humber have built up an impressive lead by going west whilst we stuck closer to the coast.  They are now heading slowly back Towards us so they will end up covering more miles - time will tell to see if we can eat into their lead.  Our strategy has always been to take the shortest possible route and be conservative about sail choices.  It has served us quite well and we have had no real damage this race other than a few busted ropes!  Over the next few days we will face a number of key decisions which you can follow on the race viewer.  First is the Canary
Islands which we must decide to leave port (danger of wind shadow) or starboard.  The third choice would be to go between the islands which could accelerate us through the fleet (acts as wind funnel) although in the last race boats became becalmed here for several days.  The next choice will be to decide whether we go for the scoring gate further
south.  The first 3 boats score and we are currently in 4th place.  If we miss the gate and go straight for the finish line in Rio we could collect a podium finish. The final choice will involve crossing the doldrums which drift north and south regularly.  We want to catch it as the band of 'no wind' moves north and we head south (minimising impact) - we also need to find where the belt is at its narrowest. The whole ranking could change drmatically between here and Rio and with 3800 miles to go the difference between all the boats is pretty meaningless.  Our confidence in really high and the boat is performing well.  Our generator and water maker are now starting to perform well! We have seen several groups of Dolphins who like to play by the bow  - mainly at night and over the next few days we are bracing ourselves to be inundated by flying fish."

Leg 1: Race start from the Humber: 13 September 2009 - La Rochelle - Rio de Janeiro: mid-late October 2009
Leg 2: Rio de Janeiro: late October 2009 - Cape Town: mid-late November 2009
Leg 3: Cape Town: late November 2009 - Western Australia: mid December 2009
Leg 4: Western Australia: 1-3 January 2010 - Singapore - Qingdao: mid February 2010
Leg 5: Qingdao: early March 2010 - California: early April 2010
Leg 6: California: mid April 2010 - Panama Canal - Caribbean: mid-late May 2010
Leg 7: Caribbean: mid-late May 2010 - New York - Sydney, Cape Breton Island - Kinsale, Co. Cork - European Stopover - Race finish in the Humber: 17 July 2010